So apparently Youtube is now the #2 ranked internet search engine below Google, ahead of Yahoo.

This is a significant milestone for a couple of reasons. One of them is that Google, which of course owns Youtube, is in control of the top two search engines on the net.

A more interesting one to me though, is just the milestone of how far internet video has come. Remember the days when cutting edge internet video meant Real Player and streaming Windows Media Video? Remember how Real Player tried to install like 92893284923 different things on your computer, with hidden check boxes that were checked in by default? Remember how Windows Media Video players would stutter and buffer every 5 seconds, not matter how much time you spent pausing the video to let it buffer ahead of playback? Ahhh, memories.

Now Youtube has become such a ubiquitous part of our digital culture that it’s practically a verb (which happened first, incidentally, with Google… I think I even heard my grandma say “So I googled it” yesterday). With television programming being offered online with services like Joost, Hulu, Miro and increasingly, the television networks themselves, and Netflix starting to offer streaming movies online, it’s exciting to think of how big internet video is going to be in just a couple of years.

One phenomenon that’s resulted from the boom of internet video that I could do without, though? The Rickroll. :\